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Comment by doomleika | Hacker News Reader

Copying my post from other thread:

Feels more like to gut Musk. Dude had a firm aquired to Twitter in '21. and is one of largest tax entity in Iceland. He got Musk saying he's terminated due to disability[1].

He deliberately asked HR repeatly that his JD is correct and his manager if he’s doing the task he was assigned while he was employed[2]. No one will ever do this unless he’s preparing for lawsuits.

He’s likely to be in the period of his acquisitions and termination like this gonna be very expensive

Dude is out for blood and Musk falls for it. It's going to be a very expensive tweet for Musk.

[1] https://twitter.com/stevanzetti/status/1633096176219160584

[2] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1633082731172069379

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Musk did not say he was terminated due to disability. The link you provided as evidence states:

The reality is that this guy (who is independently wealthy) did no actual work

Musk claims Þorleifsson did no actual work using his disability as a reason for why no actual work was being done.

Laws vary country to country and even state to state in the U.S. Generally speaking in the U.S., the ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled employees. The ADA is a great thing that allows people of varying abilities to contribute tremendously to society.

This isn't complete protection for employees though. A blind person is not likely to be hired as an air traffic controller, for example. And they're not likely to be retained if they were an air traffic controller and developed blindness.

To clarify and perhaps contradict:

From what the Twitter feed said, it looks like the guy did actual work and was successful at it.

The only fault I have so far is him asking HR to confirm that he was conforming to the requirements of his job. That should be his manager because HR doesn't know they only go based off of what the manager says the role should be doing.

But that could be an impossible task because of the organizational chaos that Twitter famously has right now. He might not have a manager.

I do think that this is a violation of the civil rights act. Maybe not ADA.

"I help hire designers" "We haven't hired a designer in 4 months"

"I help Twitter appeal to young people" "That's my job".

How I remember the Twitter thread anyway

> Dude is out for blood and Musk falls for it.

I'm not sure he's even out for blood, doesn't really seem to be the MO of someone who sells a company for millions and decides to take wages instead of stock just so he'd pay more taxes (he was one of the top icelandic taxpayers in 2021, but much further down the list of top incomes).

More likely wants to know where he's standing (figuratively, sadly) as he's apparently been spending weeks of the little time he still has trying to get answers from HR.

I like that he got Musk to basically admit publicly he's being fired because he's disabled and they won't accommodate him, though. Only thing I wonder about is whether Halli likely working under Icelandic law makes it worse or better than if he'd been covered by ADA.

In his own words he took wage so he could pay more tax on Iceland where he is located.

Thanks for the correction, as for the motive, it was my thought until I dug into his tweet, he’s aware he’s terminated by 2/26 [1] but the post yesterday was too “nice” as in he typed those not to for anyone, but for court.

[1] https://twitter.com/iamharaldur/status/1629853233798696963

>9 days ago the access to my work computer was cut, along with about 200 other Twitter employees. However your head of HR is not able to confirm if I am an employee or not. You've not answered my emails.

He got his work computer cut 9 days ago, which is probably why he was in contact with the head of HR to confirm his employment status.

Nah, I think Halli is out for blood (in the same way Rosa Parks was when she took that seat on the bus). Along with being a millionaire he is also a disability activist. In Iceland he is also known for paying the legal fees for victims of sexual abusers (both direct victims and also those who get a slander suit for calling out abusers).

I think he was never happy with Elon’s management style (nor Elon as a person), and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is extremely happy to so publicly expose Elon for how he treats his workers, and if he can get Elon to pay for it, even better.

I hope you’re right and Halli was prepping for something like this to happen, it’s much nicer that the idea Twitter has just been wasting his time.

He can sue in both places probably. He should sue in the USA to set a precedent on behalf of all persons with disabilities.

> Dude is out for blood and Musk falls for it.

Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case. I've known the experience of a few people experiencing disability over my time, and discrimination is so shockingly common that you learn to keep a record of everything just to survive in your job.

This dude could be in the top 50 asshole employees worldwide, and Musk would still be in the wrong, maybe legally, definitely morally, for handling his firing the way he did.

> He got Musk saying he's terminated due to disability

Musk said he got terminated for not doing any work. If you're not doing your part because of your disability and get fired then is that discrimination? Because in that case wouldn't that mean that you're just stuck with dead weight you inherit from other people's hiring decisions? What about passing on a candidate who has a disability that prevents them from performing adequately? Genuine questions if anybody knows the law.

Musk has an idiotic definition of work. He seems to think it's everyone's job to hack out code. The guy in question was in a senior leadership role, which means most of his work was just communicating with his team.

Musk has made it pretty clear from the start he's looking to eliminate most (if not all) roles like that.

Those roles do tend to proliferate far beyond their actual utility in large organizations.

I'm all for eliminating management. But kicking out people that have a track record of building things so good that you bought their company is how you end up up with a company that can do engineering but not produce products. Just look at what's become of Google.

How did his disability prevent him from doing his job? You realize it's perfectly possible to type and code using voice control, with the right setup?

> How did his disability prevent him from doing his job?

It was not preventing him from doing his work, it was preventing him from doing other unrelated work he was being moved to because of musk's nonsense.

> You realize it's perfectly possible to type and code using voice control, with the right setup?

While I think it's perfectly possible to type and code with motor issue (though I also think that would not be sufficient for Musk), Halli was not hired as a dev, he was acquihired when twitter purchased his company, his job is in management, clients rel, wheeling and dealing, and probably design given his site (and that Ueno was a creative agency).

> It's going to be a very expensive tweet for Musk.

Well a previous one cost him 44 billion dollars, so I think he's okay with this one.

Which one cost him $44 billion? I thought signing an agreement to buy Twitter was what ended up costing him that money.

The tweets didn't force him to buy, but had he not bought, he would have been in trouble again with the SEC for stock manipulation. Although I'm sure that would have cost him a lot less than $44B so I think it was his pride and arrogance thinking he could actually sign a contract for $44b and end up getting it for cheaper.

> Dude is out for blood and Musk falls for it. It's going to be a very expensive tweet for Musk.

The fines aren't nowhere near high enough. If we were talking about GDPR-level fines (like 5% of yearly revenue for repeat or egregious offenders!), now that would have some teeth... but the reality is, he's just going to offload paying the fines onto Twitter, it won't even hit his personal bank account. Or it will end like Musk's SEC drama, with nothing more than a tap on the wrist and him completely ignoring the mandates (he was supposed to not tweet anything stock-related directly but run that through a supervisor, but IIRC never did so).

It's high time that executives and owners get held accountable with serious fines for violating labor laws - and not just ADA/HIPAA as may be the cause here, but also wage theft, OSHA violations (East Palestine says hi) or union-busting activities.

January 2, 2023 - it was for being person of the year 2022

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